Microsoft – GISCafe Voicehttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan
Just another GIS Blogs weblogFri, 14 Dec 2018 18:46:06 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.89101652ACLU Criticizes Social Media for Allowing Access to Contenthttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/10/13/aclu-criticizes-social-media-for-allowing-access-to-content/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/10/13/aclu-criticizes-social-media-for-allowing-access-to-content/#respondThu, 13 Oct 2016 18:16:01 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4685An article this week in The New York TimesPolice Use Surveillance Tool to Scan Social Media about Chicago company Geofeedia’s use of text, photos and videos from social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to aid in law enforcement sparks controversy about law enforcement vs. civil liberties.

The use of location technology to solve crimes is nothing new. The use of social media content in a specific location is relatively new, and a potent resource for law enforcement.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing, or is it, like all new technologies, fraught with the potential for misuse as well as for the common good? It is sort of like the case of the hammer: you can use it to build a house, or to hit someone over the head with it.

We have covered Geofeedia quite extensively in GISCafe news, for use in retail, public safety, disaster response and law enforcement etc. Additional uses for Geofeedia services remain to be seen, but it may be extremely helpful for averting violence at certain events.

It is really a case of, we have the technology, so how do we use it to its best advantage without damaging civil liberties of the individual?

Geofeedia’s tool allows users to search for social media content in a specific location, as opposed to searching by words or hashtags that would be less likely to identify an exact location.

Over 500 law enforcement agencies have signed up for Geofeedia’s solutions, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The company shows how Baltimore officials were able to track and respond to violent protests that broke out after Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015, using their tool.

The ACLU reports says that Geofeedia has used programs freely offered by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter that allow app developers or advertising companies to create third-party tools. In response to criticism from ACLU saying that social media companies have been “lax” in monitoring their data, social media companies say they’ve stopped Geofeedia’s access to their information.

According to The New York Times article: “These platforms should be doing more to protect the free speech rights of activists of color,” Matt Cagle, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. in Northern California, said in an interview. “When they open their feeds to companies that market surveillance products, they risk putting their users in harm’s way.”

Each of the companies had a concern for how their data was being used. Instagram and Facebook terminated Geofeedia’s access to their data in September, while Twitter shut off access on Tuesday. The companies suggested that Geofeedia was using social media data in a way that was not allowed under their developer agreements. The public data made available by Facebook, for example, was subject to access limitations stated in the company’s platform policy. Developers are required to provide a privacy policy that details what data they are collecting and how the data is intended to be used. Consent is also required from people before using any Facebook technology that collects and processes data about them.

In response to this news, Team Geofeedia issued a blog entitled A Commitment to Freedom of Speech and Civil Liberties, in which it defined Geofeedia’s role as a “software platform that aims to provide important, real-time, publicly available information to a broad range of private and public sector clients, including corporations, media and journalism groups, marketing and advertising firms, educational companies, cities, schools, sports teams, and the aviation sector.”

Phil Harris, chief executive of Geofeedia, said in a statement that his company “provides some clients, including law enforcement officials across the country, with a critical tool in helping to ensure public safety while protecting civil rights and liberties.” He said the firm has policies to prevent “inappropriate use of our software.”

Mr. Harris added that the company understands that given how quickly digital technology changes, Geofeedia “must continue to work to build on these critical protections of civil rights.”

The blog states: “In each of these areas, Geofeedia is committed to the principles of personal privacy, transparency, and both the letter and the spirit of the law when it comes to individual rights. Our platform provides some clients, including law enforcement officials across the country, with a critical tool in helping to ensure public safety while protecting civil rights and liberties.

Notably, our software has also been used in response and recovery efforts – from the Boston Marathon to the effects of Hurricane Matthew that we saw this past weekend – to assist millions of people affected by both manmade and natural events.

Geofeedia has in place clear policies and guidelines to prevent the inappropriate use of our software; these include protections related to free speech and ensuring that end-users do not seek to inappropriately identify individuals based on race, ethnicity, religious, sexual orientation or political beliefs, among other factors. That said, we understand, given the ever-changing nature of digital technology, that we must continue to work to build on these critical protections of civil rights.

Geofeedia will continue to engage with key civil liberty stakeholders, including the ACLU, and the law enforcement community to make sure that we do everything in our power to support the security of the American people and the protection of personal freedoms.”

The ACLU got wind of the use of Geofeedia when 60+ law enforcement agency records revealed a significant expansion of social media surveillance.

“Posts on social media platforms can reveal information about our location, our religion, the people we associate with,” Cagle said. “Users of social media websites do not expect or want the government to be monitoring this information. And users should not be at risk of being branded a risk to public safety simply for speaking their mind on social media.”

The New York Times has used Geofeedia technology in the past, but stated that it has not used it since 2015.

Regardless of the threat to civil liberties, it does appear that such location-based information gleaned from social media is here to stay, for reasons of national security, community security, disaster response and recovery, etc. Thus it would seem policies to protect civil rights of individuals need to be quickly put in place. Geofeedia is not the only company providing this sort of surveillance. See our story in GISCafeVoiceVencore Aggregates Data from many Open Sources and Social Media

According to event organizers, hosted and produced by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a non-profit non-lobbying educational organization, the annual GEOINT Symposium is the nation’s largest gathering of intelligence professionals and the preeminent intelligence event of the year.

I’m making interview appointments at the moment and looking forward to seeing many of you there. Contact me, Susan Smith, Editor, susan.smith@ibsystems.com if you wish to schedule an interview. Our president, Sanjay Gangal,will also be conducting video interviews at Booth # is 3092. Please contact him at sanjay@ibsystems.com if you wish to schedule a video interview.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/06/15/giscafe-at-geoint-2015/feed/04020Special Blog Coverage of 3D Cities Coming in November!https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/10/20/special-blog-coverage-of-3d-cities-coming-in-november/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/10/20/special-blog-coverage-of-3d-cities-coming-in-november/#respondMon, 20 Oct 2014 13:41:35 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=3651During the week of November 17th, GISCafe Voice will run a special feature blog on the topic, “3D Cities: Envisioning Communities of the Future.”

Cities worldwide are charged with the same challenge: that of creating or retrofitting sustainable, intelligent infrastructure. Cities need the best in design, geospatial, visualization and analytical tools to realize a viable and intelligent city design. 3D City design is architectural design times thousands, plus it must have the ability to be interwoven with other surrounding infrastructure and foster an urban conversation.

Urban data must be managed, visualized and analyzed, considering all legal, code regulations, utility and site planning as well as legacy data and geography. Open standards such as CityGML bring open data model and XML-based format for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO TC211. A plethora of companies are providing products for 3D cityscape technology, and providing GIS to be able to manage, visualize and analyze all the information that makes up an entire metropolis.

In an effort to cover all companies offering 3D Cities software and solutions, I have compiled a 3D Cities Special Coverage Questionnaire to be filled out and returned to me at susan.smith@ibsystems.com
Also feel free to add to this any relevant content, images and/or videos to illustrate points. Please include the name of your company and contact information. We look forward to including you in our coverage.

Financing the building of satellites and contracting satellite imagery used to be the sole province of governments. Satellite imaging is now morphing into a market where very high-resolution images are available commercially and startups can actually build their own satellites.

According to John Murtagh, Geo-Intelligence Strategy Partner for Airbus Defense and Space, the main change in the industry is that the profile of the industry has changed. “What used to be the preserve of the military and scientific community is now much more an embedded component of applications used by anyone with a smartphone e.g. location-based services. However, the market must continue to evolve and grow in scope, as satellite imagery is really not accessible to most industries. There is a need to continue investing in ‘big data’ spatial management, focusing on smart access and data analytics.”

Because of the federal budget cuts and the financial outlay of putting a constellation of satellites in space, most of the commercial satellite imaging providers have either merged or been acquired by other companies, such as the acquisition of GeoEye by DigitalGlobe. The two primary contenders in North America now are DigitalGlobe and Airbus Defense and Space.

From Germany comes BlackBridge, formerly RapidEye, providing end-to-end solutions such as satellite operations, data center and geocloud solutions. With the help of new funding, they will be developing a new generation satellite constellation. European Space Imaging provides very high-resolution satellite imagery to customers in Europe and North Africa and offers advanced VHR satellites and services.

WorldView-3, courtesy of DigitalGlobe

One significant game changer has been recent: this year DigitalGlobe, Inc. received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce on its application to allow the company to sell its highest-quality and industry-leading commercial satellite imagery. Consequently, the U.S. government will relax restrictions to allow for commercially available satellite imagery up to 25 cm resolution – this being twice as detailed as the previous limitation of 50 cm.

DigitalGlobe was already positioned for this: their DigitalGlobe WorldView-3 which launched August 13, 2014, (Worldview-3 launch from Vandenburg) is the first commercial satellite set up to capture these high resolution images at 25 cm. Within six months of this historic launch, those private industries who want these high-resolution images and videos of the globe can have them for the asking – and the ticket price, of course.

The high-resolution images from the $463 million Worldview-3 are so sharp that maps’ level of accuracy and detail will increase so that it can determine 10-inch objects such as telephone poles, mailboxes, garbage cans and other things attached to ground level. Imagine, being able to see such things from space! Customers can see through smoke, take a look beneath the ocean’s surface and determine the mineral and moisture content of the earth below.

Just to show how the commercial market for satellite imagery has shifted over recent years, Google and Microsoft are customers of DigitalGlobe and Airbus, along with NASA, NOAA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other U.S. federal agencies. This year Google signed a multi-year contract with DigitalGlobe to use satellite imagery for apps like Google Earth, Maps and Street View.

Startups Populate Space

The appearance of such start-ups as Planet Labs and Skybox Imaging with their low-cost homemade satellites, represent disruptive technology in the satellite imaging space that could impact consumers or at the very least, customers who would not ordinarily spring for high-resolution space imagery. Skybox was recently acquired by Google for $500 million, a move that signals Google’s intention to expand its Internet service offerings.

Skybox Imaging

The small startup company Skybox Imaging was started by co-founder and director of marketing and customer relations Ching-Yu Hu and three friends while they were grad students at Stanford in 2009. Ching-Yu-Hu envisioned that they could “index the earth the way Google indexes the Internet.” So I guess that’s where Google comes in: already there, in the way of indexing. And Skybox is already there in terms of providing the satellite. Last November the company launched its first mini-bar-sized satellite, SkySat-1 into orbit aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket. Plans are to launch eight more by the end of 2015.

Skybox even has its own rocket. “We call this Earth Observation 2.0, where satellites are simply sensors and the magic is in harnessing scalable computing and unbounded analytics to find answers to the world’s most important geospatial problems regardless of data source,” says the “About Section” on their website. What is truly remarkable about Skybox is that they have built their own satellites and their own image processing algorithms, raised more than $91 million in funding and now has 120 employees.

According to an article in The New York Times, initially, Skybox will help improve Google’s dominant mapping service. But over time, the five-year-old start-up and its ability to launch satellites costing from $300,000 to $4 million could aid a bigger Google goal: expanding its Internet service offerings.

“Their satellites will help keep our maps accurate with up-to-date imagery,” a representative for Google said in a statement. “Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able to help improve Internet access and disaster relief — areas Google has long been interested in.”

Dulles International Airport, courtesy of Planet Labs

Three-year-old Planet Labs has raised $65 million in funding and already has several satellites in orbit, that they’ve fashioned cheaply from electronics and modern computing efforts. Planet Labs satellites are smaller than those built by Skybox, and are about the size of a tissue box. CEO Will Marshall has reported that his satellites can snap photos of the planet on a weekly basis with a 3- to 5-meter per pixel resolution.

Because they are able to produce so many satellites, once operational, Planet Labs will soon be able to claim they have the largest number of orbiting commercial imaging satellites. They send two satellites into orbit simultaneously and are targeting agriculture to purchase services to use the imagery to determine when are the best times to grow and harvest crops.

Costs Coming Down

DEM, Courtesy of PhotoSat

For those traditional vendors of satellite imagery, costs are still reliant upon the performance of a satellite, the changing face of technology such as increased and less expensive processing power, and policy changes. “Satellite surveying costs are already substantially lower than the costs of ground surveying or airborne LiDAR,” said Christine Hollander of PhotoSat. “Satellite technology costs will continue to come down as processing power becomes less expensive and speed increases.”

John Murtagh of Airbus believes the main drivers for the cost of satellite imagery are technical. “The capabilities of satellites have a direct impact on the cost as the more performant satellites (resolution, accuracy, location, etc.) are generally more expensive to build and operate. However the productivity of these highly capable satellites has increased dramatically, which has an impact on unit costs. This simplistic view should also be considered through the prism of data policy initiatives that are, for example, promoting the free and open access to a number of datasets with relatively low resolutions. The result so this is that any future evolution in the cost of satellite imagery will primarily be determined by the value offered to the client rather than to any specific technology.”

Services

Each satellite service company offers a wide variety of services and capacities.

With the very-high-resolution twin satellites Pléiades 1A and 1B, SPOT 6 and now SPOT-7 satellite, Airbus Defence and Space’s optical satellite constellation will offer the company’s customers a high level of detail across wide areas, a highly reactive image programming service and unique surveillance and monitoring capabilities.

The Geo-Intelligence program at Airbus Defense and Space offers a wide range of products and services derived from both very high and high-resolution optical and radar imagery primarily acquired by the Pléiades, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 and TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X satellites. Airbus is the only commercial company to offer both high-resolution optical and SAR solutions. Among the services Airbus offers are:

– Reference Layers that are ready-to-go into any GIS software.

– Satellite-derived digital elevation models that provide highly accurate height information regardless of relief and weather conditions. A new industry standard is being set by geo-intelligence experts at Airbus with the launch of its latest DEM product, WorldDEM.

– Monitoring services combine access to Airbus Space & Defense’s satellite constellation with expertise in image analysis, processing and interpretation to provide change detection and monitoring services over a given area of interest.

An example of new innovation available by partnerships is that of BlackBridge and MDA Information Systems LLC. BlackBridge announced a strategic partnership with the U.S. company, MDA Information Systems (MDA), to introduce a new change monitoring solution, RapidEye Persistent Change Monitoring (RapidEye PCM).

RapidEye PCM makes it possible for speedy updates to cartographic datasets. MDA’s patented change detection technology uses scale- and sensor-independent algorithms to compare a stack of images over time and quickly identify areas with lasting changes. RapidEye PCM can identify only lasting changes, such as new construction or permanent infrastructure changes, saving on manual scanning costs by up to 90%.

The incorporation of RapidEye imagery with MDA’s PCM technology allows users to identify small-scale changes as much as 5 to 5 meters. With added high-resolution imagery, they can update cartographic data sets up to 1:5,000 scale.

“Our satellite topography developed from a technology we invented has the capability to map surface features to better than 30cm accuracy in elevation,” explained Christine Hollander. “Satellite-based mapping is now suitable for engineering applications such as open pit volume change measurements, mine tailings monitoring, toes and crests mapping and oil and gas seismic planning. Our clients are using topographic data as an extension to and replacement for ground surveying and LiDAR.”

At the Esri User Conference 2014, Beau Legeer, of Exelis Vis spoke on the topic, “Advanced Modalities and GIS,” beginning with the use of SAR technology. SAR has been around along time but is more expensive for regular GIS users, and is only used by governments. Some good SAR data may be available for free, said Legeer. Exelis provides visualization information solutions such as ENVI, a geospatial software foundation with processing and analysis tools that are easily customizable.

“More spectral bands from multi-spectral and hyper-spectral sensors are now available from WorldView-3,” he said. “There are unique considerations for high-resolution datasets. Bringing localized scale to analysis is something that can be done better than before, as well as improved pixel purity. Spectral information can be used even with low spectral resolutions.”

Results of using high spectral resolution may include:

Material identification

Achieve spectral separation of species

Run advanced vegetation indices

Use cases:

Separate weeds from crops

Calculate burn ratios and assess forest fire burn severities

Identify minerals associated with hydrocarbon presence

Detect “invisible” hazards

DigitalGlobe Products & Services

Satellites

SPOT 7 image of La Mecque, France

Airbus Defense and Space operates a fleet of satellites as a constellation, with the Pléiades satellite offer 50cm imagery products across a 20km swatch, up to 100km x 100km in strip mapping mode. The twin satellites (Pléiades 1A and 1B) operate in a phased 180 degree orbit enabling daily revisit for frequent monitoring.

SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 work in concert with the Pléiades satellites to complete the optical constellation. The SPOT satellites are designed for providing large area coverages, making them very suitable to serve cartographic and monitoring applications. The daily acquisition capacity for both of these SPOT satellites is 6 million sq. km.

TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X are radar satellites that acquire high-resolution and wide-area radar imagery independently of weather conditions. These sensors can acquire imagery down to 25cm resolution with a maximum capacity of 40,500 sq.km. in a single scene.

Also Airbus offers DMC-class imagery offering rapid coverage and revisit of large areas at 22m and a near real-time capacity with competitive pricing as well as FORMOSAT-2 imagery for high-resolution change detection.

As a result of their agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, DigitalGlobe will be permitted to offer customers the highest resolution imagery available from their current constellation. These updated approvals will permit DigitalGlobe to sell imagery to all of its customers, not just the U.S. Government, at up to 0.25m panchromatic and 1.0m multispectral ground sample distance (GSD). This takes effect six months after WorldView-3, which launched this August, became operational. The change to national policy comes with the support of the U.S. Departments of Defense and State and Intelligence Community, and will hugely impact the sale and quality of commercial imagery available to commercial clients.

DigitalGlobe currently operates a fleet of five high-resolution earth imaging satellites. GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2 are the two that collect imagery sharper than 0.50m, and all customers will have access to that imagery at the highest native resolution. WorldView-3 will provide even higher resolution at 0.31m, and the GeoEye-2 satellite, which is nearly complete, will capture similarly sharp images when it is launched. GeoEye-2 will replace a satellite that is currently in service or expand the constellation, depending upon market demand.

Jeffrey R. Tarr, DigitalGlobe CEO said that the WorldView-1 satellite will be shifted into a different orbit so that it can image the earth in the afternoon local time each day. This allows the entire DigitalGlobe constellation to monitor changes on earth at various times throughout the day.

BlackBridge secured funding of $$22 CDN for its next generation of satellites, RapidEye+ and to expand their current range of geospatial solutions. RapidEye+ will be a constellation of five satellites with an imaging capacity that will far exceed the current RapidEye constellation’s capacity of 5 million km2 per day.

The RapidEye+ superspectral system will include 14 bands strategically placed for agriculture, vegetation monitoring, land cover discrimination, water quality, and many other applications. This band set also includes a panchromatic channel better than 1 meter resolution. RapidEye+ is expected to launch in 2019.

What’s in the Future?

According to John Murtagh of Airbus, the market for satellite imagery needs to be developed further. “The current usage has not utilized the full capabilities of what satellite imagery can provide. Technical capabilities and the quality of our products are more advanced than what was available a couple of years ago.”

Better algorithms and faster processing have changed satellite topographic surveying, for example, a widely adopted technology. According to PhotoSat’s Christine Hollander, “Over the past 12 months we have progressed from monthly mine pit surveying with accuracies of 30 cm to bi-weekly tailings surveying with accuracies better than 15cm.”

As knowledge of these capabilities becomes more widespread, costs continue to come down, and technologies such as the cloud make it possible to view and analyze high-resolution imagery, more industries and individual commercial firms will begin to want to adopt satellite imagery services.

It looks as though Microsoft Corp. is moving into a paradigm shift with its move toward a $7 billion acquisition from Nokia to thrust it into the mobile market. Nokia will still remain a company after Microsoft buys the company’s handset business. While Microsoft is acquiring what Nokia is best known for, the Finnish company is holding on to two if its major businesses: networking and mapping. Microsoft has been hoping to take a slice of the mobile market from smartphone moguls Apple and Google, and meanwhile has been partnering with Nokia for three years.

Microsoft’s position in the smartphone industry worldwide is a distant No. 3, and mobile software accounts for approximately 4% of the market. Comparatively Apple and Google software garner 90% of that market.

Steve Ballmer is planning to retire from Microsoft within 12 months, and it is looking like Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive who was running Nokia until the deal was signed, will rejoin Microsoft after the Nokia deal goes through. He may also be in line for the CEO position after Ballmer retires as he is very familiar with the Microsoft line of products and the move toward mobile.

Ballmer said he thinks Microsoft needs to become a hardware vendor instead of making other vendors responsible for creating the hardware that Microsoft software runs on. Some industry experts believe this is a no-win acquisition for Microsoft and Nokia, as Microsoft has never been a hardware manufacturer and has not garnered much traction in the smartphone market. Nokia’s smartphones were around before the iPhone, and at one time they were the largest cell phone maker, yet they could never make a good enough smartphone to compete with Apple and Samsung. In 2013, Samsung took over the role as the largest smartphone maker.

The plan to purchase Nokia may create waves with other companies the employ Microsoft Windows phone OS on their devices (such as Samsung), but that is not a substantial amount of business.

Ballmer thinks that Google and Apple do not have a permanent monopoly on the smartphone mobile business. Microsoft’s first attempt at their own computer, the Surface tablet, which was designed to take the iPad market – from those who were disgruntled with the low computing power of that product, has not been successful after its launch last year. Last quarter, Microsoft took a $900 million charge for unsold Surface inventory.

With Nokia being a Finnish company, Microsoft can use a portion of its foreign-held cash to pay for the acquisition, avoiding high taxes that would be levied if the cash was brought back to the U.S. The largest deal in Microsoft’s history, the acquisition of Skype, was handled in much the same way.

Industry experts say that although Windows 8 is debuting this month, the Windows platform is waning in popularity. Microsoft has been slow to pick up mobile, and now has come forth claiming that the new oeprating system will translate well from PCs to mobile devices.

Google’s success is linked largely to the success of Android, which runs on more than 2/3 of the world’s smartphones. Android pushes customers to Google sites and services, a set up that Microsoft does not have with mobile.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/10/11/google-shares-outrank-microsofts/feed/02111Alliance between Esri and Microsoft announcedhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/07/23/alliance-between-esri-and-microsoft-announced/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/07/23/alliance-between-esri-and-microsoft-announced/#commentsMon, 23 Jul 2012 23:01:39 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=1992At the Esri International User Conference held in San Diego today, Esri announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft to assist public and private agencies and communities around the world during disasters. As part of this agreement, Microsoft will display Esri public information maps on its cloud-based Disaster Response Incident Portal, as well as point citizens to the maps via its online outlets, such as MSN and Bing.

The hope is that Esri’s ArcGIS integration within a number of Microsoft’s disaster response management solutions will provide governments and leading aid organizations with a more comprehensive set of tools to address challenges presented by disasters, both natural and unnatural.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/07/23/alliance-between-esri-and-microsoft-announced/feed/21992Rio+20 Earth Summit tackles broad sweep of sustainability challengeshttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/06/26/rio20-earth-summit-tackles-broad-sweep-of-sustainability-challenges/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/06/26/rio20-earth-summit-tackles-broad-sweep-of-sustainability-challenges/#commentsTue, 26 Jun 2012 18:32:18 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=1934At Rio+20 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil last week, was originally titled the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development. Varying reports have emerged from that conference, with many seeking to find answers to the problems surrounding sustainable development and environmental challenges.

In the beginning the conference’s aim was to set of Sustainable Development Goals that would replace the U.N. Millennium Development Goals—which were agreed to in New York in 2000 and are set to expire in 2015—to address global poverty.

Concerns were more broadbased than that at this Summit as parties recognized and pressed forward with votes to support the need for many progressive changes in the development and environment agenda, such as broad approval for addressing an array of ocean sustainability and agricultural issues and the creation of a new high-level forum that will draft new Sustainable Development Goals by 2014.

Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, sustainability legend Gro Harlem Brundtland, IPCC Chair Rajendra K. Pachauri, EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard and 150 VIP guests celebrated the first concrete outcome at Rio+20: The launch of Sustainia100. Esri is proud to announce that Eye on Earth has been chosen for this prestigious list of solutions, according to the press release.

Eye on Earth is an environmental application leveraging Esri’s ArcGIS Online, developed with Microsoft and the European Environment Agency (EEA), to deliver air, noise, and water data to European citizens.

“Eye on Earth’s place in the Sustainia 100 shows real recognition for information sharing,” said Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. “Knowledge can change our relationship with the environment, helping us become more sustainable and resilient to the challenges ahead. We hope the award will encourage even more citizens and organisations to get involved in Eye on Earth.”

Jeff Peters: There are 3400 registered, and an additional 300 people registered today so we think the number will be around 3700 people altogether. There will be about 70-74 exhibitors.

Sanjay Gangal: What is the purpose of the show?

Jeff Peters: This year we did things differently: one we changed the name – calling it the 2012 Esri Federal GIS conference. We wanted to do outreach to not only Esri users, but also to users of geospatial technology. When we looked at the numbers of people attending, a lot of attendees were first time attendees of an Esri Conference. 70% of the people attending are not even Esri users, they are users of geospatial technology. Key messages we have at this conference include emphasis on the cloud, from a policy perspective; coming out of the White House this is critical for us. The costs savings and efficiencies that are coming along as a result of cloud and cloud technology are big to the government. Esri has a wonderful offering with ArcGIS Online; we have ArcGIS Online on-premise, and we have about 40 agencies across federal government that are implementing ArcGIS Online on-premise. Some are intelligence agencies where implementation of ArcGIS Online is behind the firewall. The geoplatform that was announced today that is a hybrid implementation, meaning it includes ArcGIS Online provided from Esri as well as ArcGIS Online within their infrastructure.

Sanjay Gangal: Can you explain what ArcGIS Online is for those who don’t know?

Jeff Peters: The cloud architecture is describe cloud as infrastructure, cloud as a service platform and cloud as software as a service (SaaS). Esri is leveraging infrastructure as a service. Typically infrastructure providers are organizations like Amazon or Microsoft, Terramark, VCE or IBM. We are the software and platform providers that run on top of that infrastructure. Before when people would buy our technology, they would buy desktops or servers or licenses of technology. ArcGIS online allows you to subscribe to that. Instead of paying a perpetual license fee, you basically subscribe to it as a service. Subscription pricing will be available in the May/June timeframe. We have lots of people beta testing now.

Sanjay Gangal: Tell us about the new release, ArcGIS 10.1.

Jeff Peters: That is in beta now, to be released in the May timeframe. The release is an update across the board of our whole enterprise desktop stack: desktop technology more analytical tools, mobile technology in the context of more API. We say one map on any device, so that the map that you author on the desktop can be shared on a browser, device or as a service. 10.1 is really an across the board implementation of our traditional enterprise technology and the introduction of the cloud in ArcGIS Online.

Sanjay Gangal: You also mentioned lidar support.

Jeff Peters: Yes, we have ImageServer where you can take raw imagery in and provide it out as a service, processing it on the fly. We’ve done that with traditional imagery formats and now we’re doing it with lidar. We’ve got lots of customers with lidar DVDS or lidar stored on different systems and datasets so large it’s difficult to publish out. So with the technology you can point it to datasets and it can serve lidar on the fly very fast and efficiently – very large datasets. Talk about big data – this is allowing the organizing and publishing of big data.

Sanjay Gangal: Any other new announcements?

Jeff Peters: That’s it, obviously ArcGIS Online is what we’ve been working on for almost a year and is now operational. We also provide ArcGIS as a system that continues to serve our traditional desktop base and servers. The success of our customers is a big announcement: U.S. Department of the Interior deputy secretary David J. Hayes talked about the geoplatform and how Esri technology is really driving a lot of initiatives the White House is providing, and the advantages of the cloud.